Months and months later...

Allow me some space to rant this morning...

So let me get this straight. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist delivers a taped speech called "Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith," in which he again is threatening to go with the "nuclear option" of banning the filibuster against Bush's insane choices of nominees. He holds it in a packed Baptist church in Kentucky.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically it's this: our illustrious President chooses nominees to fill positions. Most of these nominees are like choosing a Grand Wizard of the KKK to oversee police activities in a predominantly black neighborhood, or a wolf to guard chickens. The latest one is John Bolton to be the next ambassador to the United Nations, and he's pretty much confirmed himself as a confrontational guy who doesn't think the U.N. is worth anything.

Continuing. So Frist holds this speech, insinuating that Democrats are trying to filibuster against Bolton's appointment because they're against faith. Adding to this is a comment by Charles Colson, head of Prison Fellowship Ministries, who says that the filibustering of court nominees is "destroying the balance of power, which was a vital Christian contribution to the founding of our nation."

Colson, are you, to put it bluntly, out of your devolved mind? Filibustering is destroying the balance of power?! You're claiming that a desperate technique usable only by a minority oppressed by a one-sided Congress is destroying the BALANCE of POWER? I'm just curious: is giving all power to one side of Congress balanced?

Secondly... the concept of Balance of Power is a vital Christian contribution to our nation? How can you take credit for that with a straight face? These two phrases in one sentence make for an amazing viewpoint: the minority should not be allowed to challenge those in power, because that destroys the balance of power, which Christians are responsible for. Colson, look up the word "balance" in the dictionary.

How can Frist and Colson argue, as their speeches apparently do, that people with their opinion have God on their side, and say that those with a different view are faithless?

I just hope that someday people of faith might want to stand up and say that, just perhaps, the people in power don't speak for them, that the government's view of faith is not their own. Religion in this country is not a single monolithic thing, and it's time to stop pretending it is. The extreme right does not have a monopoly on God's viewpoint; all they have is the megaphone.